Tonight’s class is going to be on the subject of Dana.
Dana is the same in Pali as
in Sanskrit. It is a word that is
associated with generosity. In the
practice of Buddhism, there is a difference series in terms of what Dana is and
how it fits in there. We're going to talk about that in a moment. Because this
is a holiday time and we’re all kind of getting used to the idea of giving,
part of that generosity is giving. I kind of want to go over some of that and
have the ideas of how you give and why you give.

So first of all, I want to have some participation
of examples of why people give gifts. It doesn’t mean your reason but why
people give gifts in general. Why do we give gifts?

Student: To make the other person happy like an
exchange to let them know they are important.

Gilbert: To make everybody happy? If you give the
gifts, does that make everybody happy?

Student: The person receiving it.

Gilbert: So why would you give a particular gift to
a particular person?

Student: To show them you know what they like.

Gilbert: Okay, show them you know what they like. Anything
else? Let me give you some examples: giving a gift to your boss; (laughs…) so is
it voluntary or involuntary, mandatory?

Student: Obligation. (laughs…)

Gilbert: Obligation; so is that really a gift? What
other kinds of gifts are given? Now you understand what I’m saying - the circumstances
in where one will give a gift. Both of you were talking about giving gifts to acquaintances
like maybe somebody close like, “Hey, I bought this for you because you really
like Blues music so here's a CD on Blues.” You know, “Wow, you really know what
I like;” that kind of gift. You give them that because you want them to think
that you understand them. Why?

Student: To let them know that you care about them.

Gilbert: Okay, so you know that you care about them.
So you get into the care side. What other kinds of gift do people give?

Student: Birthday gifts.

Gilbert: Birthday gifts, okay so those are
situational gifts. You don’t give birthday gifts to everybody but you nevertheless
are giving a gift. There are times when you give birthday gift out of love,
right? And there are times when you give birthday gifts because they are simply
related to you.

Student: When you go to birthday parties.

Gilbert: Yes, you don’t want to go to birthday
parties without a gift, right? So we look at these things and see that sometimes
when we give gifts, they are situational or cultural. You have got to give one
to your Tia Rosa or Aunt Rose. We talked about the boss and the employees
giving gifts but do you give them because you want to or because you have to? What's
in your heart when you give a gift? What’s a special gift or is it just you know,
“Just give him a gift card from Marshall's or Ross or Target” and they’ll like
that.

So we look at this and say, “I really, really,
really like giving!” “Oh, thank you! Thank you” for the gift. We really want to
give something. Is it really generosity? Is that really what the meaning of
things is? Or is it just because this is the time of the year where you
exchange gifts?

It's interesting because I was reading and there's
what is called tainted gifts and
untainted gifts. So a tainted gift could be a bottle of whiskey to an
alcoholic. That is not quite a gift is it? He may think so but I don't know how
generous you are really being. There could be untainted gifts like the Blues
records or the CDs where you're not going to harm the person or get deaf
listening to it. So those are untainted.

We begin to look into what generosity is and what
the heart is. That's a very, very important aspect of the idea of giving. We
give because like you said to make them think that you understand them and that
you feel for them, to make them feel good. But why, is that for your feeling? What
are the other reasons why people give gifts?

Student: Weddings.

Gilbert: Weddings, again these are gifts that you
give out of a particular reason.

Student: (inaudible)

Gilbert: So if you go to a wedding and you gave
them candlesticks, you were really thinking about them (or not), you know. I
think the crummiest gift I ever gave was one where I thought I was really cool.
When I was very young (with all sorts of household items for people who were getting
married and had to live together), I put all these things in buckets and put
all that stuff together for them. But I think the people are looking for
something a bit more sparkly. So that was my ignorance about what they really wanted.
But I would say that was an untainted gift. At least they clean up things. It is
interesting because when we look at this and we look at our heart, what is in our heart? So today I really
want you to think about what gifts are. To give to a family member is very,
very easy.

Something very funny happened today. Because I've
been working on this topic and this lecture for a couple of days, I was in
court and there was a bailiff in the court. He said, “look at this article
right here in the paper.”

I said, “What’s in the article?”

He said, “It's about two people. They don't know
the person but each of them are giving a kidney to the person.” And then he
goes, “Who would do that?”

And I said, “I’d say somebody with unbridled love.”
That is an incredible, incredible gift. Wow, we just put giving in a whole
different category, right? Vey amazing… but that too was not by happenstance
that this person tells me that today. It just defies the laws of probability
that this person is going to tell me something that I'm going to teach to you
tonight. That itself is a gift. That is the power of the gift. That is the power
of the heart. Thepower of the heart
is absolutely incredible and it works
in this way. It works in very, very strange ways because it resonates in this
way. If you resonate your heart in a certain way, it changes things in how you
give gifts.

I remember very early on with my master, Master
Sheng Yen. I was trying in my naïve way try to convince him to use the Dictaphone
to record all his writings. So it was very strange because it was difficult for
him to kind of comprehend how easy it would be to do that rather than write it
out. But it was difficult for me to comprehend perhaps that was part of the
whole art of his writing - is writing it out.

In any case, I sent him a Dictaphone and
transcriber and cassettes to Taiwan.
I remember writing on there, “this gift
has no giver, no donor and it has no receiver.” In another word, I’m saying
that “if it doesn’t work for you, it's okay. Just pass it on to wherever it will
work.” But the idea was that I am not giving anything; you are not receiving
anything. This is just the way it is. This is more of a perfection of a gift.

Not to say that I am perfect. I'm not a perfect person
but in that particular act, there was perfection there. This brings us to the Paramitas, meaning perfected practice.
The first Paramita is Dana – generosity. In this way, you could say
the other great footing that we base our practice on, is wisdom - Right View.
In the Paramitas, Dana is the first one and Prajna is the last one. But it runs
like we saw in talking about 37 Aids to Enlightenment, it runs full circle. Within them are the Four
Noble Truths: suffering, cause of suffering, cessation of suffering, and the
path to enlightenment. All of these things are embodied inthis wonderfulgenerosity; incredible generosity
that people can do.

I mentioned the story before and I'll bring it up
again because it’s apropos to the one that Master Sheng Yen talked about; that
there was a cab driver who was driving recklessly. He then managed to kill this
man's wife and because of his reckless driving he was put into prison. His
family was left destitute. But who do you think supported the family? It was
the husband of the woman who was run over. When they asked him he said, “How
are they going to live?”

It would be difficult for most of us to do that
because we’d harbor so much anger that we want to see people associated with him
or have him suffer because his family suffers. Again, these gifts are in a different
category. They’re in a greater, greater category. I bring this up to you not
because now you go, “this person is a life-saver, you don’t have to pay for
crappy gift” or it could be something very good. Not to minimize that but to
expand your horizons of what Dana really means; what this generosity really means.

So when we give a gift, what kind of gifts can we give?

Student: (barely audible)

Gilbert: Did your husband do it to get merit? No?
Your contribution today is very good. It reflects a very open heart. These are
things that distinguish between kind of selfish giving and unselfish giving. When
we are giving from the heart, there
is no idea of merit. So it
transcends the idea of merit because sometimes, somebody will give something
for merits or do something for merit. And if they do that, there is not much merit
in it.

For instance let's say I'm up here and I'm talking.
I come every week and I talk okay? The pay is all right, you know. (laughs…)
Every once in a while I get a bottle of water to drink. But the idea is I don't
do it for the merit and whatever merit I get, I transfer it to my students. I
don't do it for that reason.

There is an idea that when we give, sometimes we
give because we want merit; “now, I would like to thank Robert Johnson who
donated $1 million so we could have the east wing of the museum.” And people were
clapping hands… and he feels good about it. They even put a bronze plaque
there; “Robert Johnson donated $1 million. Thank you for the generous
donation.”

He's generous; no doubt. Maybe he needed it for his
taxes. Maybe he was very generous. But the idea is it depends on what the volition
is in terms of the one who was giving it or what was behind that volition. That's
very interesting because I read about this and we’re always talking about the
mind. They talk about there is a volitional part of the gift. To me, I say up
to a point. And then there isn't the idea of volition as much as just the art of giving; the perfected art of giving. It’s just doing it with no idea of any volition
or any donor or any receiver of the gift.

So back at the gifts, what kind of gift do people give?
I’ll give you a hint; you can give a material gift.

Student: Superficial gift?

Gilbert: A superficial gift, okay. Superficial
gifts would be something that somebody just gives to get it real quick. That
would be a gift like on the way to someplace.

I was listening to this one comedian. He was going on
his first date with this girl and he realized he hadn’t bought her anything. So
he stopped by at this gas station and saw a beautiful like red cloth flower on
a stem. He gave it to her but as he gave it to her, he realized that the cloth
flower was actually red panties. (laughs…) Talk about superficial gift… So he
said how embarrassed he was by giving this superficial gift so he said for all
of you, never make that mistake.

In any case, there are gifts of material things. Let's
say a gift card or a toaster, a sweater. But what other kind of gifts can
somebody give?

Student: Gift of time.

Gilbert: Gift of time; time for what?

Student: To volunteer.

Gilbert: To volunteer; okay, what kind of time gift
can we give?

Student: Knowledge.

Gilbert: Knowledge; the teachings is a gift. Somebody
who comes in and teach yes, that’s a gift to the person who’s receiving it. The
gift of an ear for people, a gift of being there of helping with no idea that
you're going to get anything.

This last past week, I've had people that helped me
on things that I needed to do and stepped up unexpectedly. I was very, very touched
by what they did. They gave their time that they didn’t have to do. It touched
me greatly in terms of that gift of time.

Student: (inaudible)

Gilbert: Yes, we’re getting to the meat of that
with gifts of material things, helping out, giving somebody something. Now we’re
no longer just in the holiday gift giving. We’re talking about really gift giving
– generosity every single day of the year. It’s looking at what we have to give.

I remember when I was very young law student. There
was this one person that was teaching us about Immigration Law. At one point he
got frustrated and got a little bit cocky and said, “What I’m teaching you, you
know my time is worth $350 an hour.” In other words, he’s saying he’s worth
that. And I'm going, “Wow, I wonder if he measures his time while he’s sitting
on the pot.” You know, “there goes $20 worth.” (laughs…) Every time I tell a
story it gets better… or worse…

But the thing is that I said to myself “I really
hope I never get to be like him” because I’d hate to measure my time in money
and talking to people and going “Wow, if I didn’t talk here, I could have made
money in my office.” I could've done that but what is the quality of life?
What’s the purpose of life if all we do is measure things in this way?

I want to read you a little bit since we've been
talking about this, about The Perfection
of Giving.

Giving is essential to
Buddhism. Giving includes charity, or giving material help to people in want. It
also includes giving spiritual guidance to those who seek it and loving-kindness
to all those who need it. However, ones motivation for giving to others is at
least as important to what is given.

That part reminds me of the story of an old lady. She
was very poor and she had made her candles and she took her candles to the Temple to offer them as a
gift. When they found out she was coming and giving her candles, the Abbot came
out and received the gift from her.

Later on because her fortune changed, she became
very wealthy. Once again she returned to the temple and when she returned to
the temple, she brought so many gifts for the temple. But when she came to give
the gifts, it was only one of the lowly monks that came to receive her gifts.

So she was a bit set off by this and asked to see
the Abbot. So when the Abbot came out, he said, “How can I help you?”

She said, “When I came here before, I only gave you
a few crummy candles and you came out to thank me. This time I give you all these
and you sent one of your lowly monks? Why is that?”

The Abbott said “Because when you came here last
time, you gave almost everything you have. This time because you’re very
wealthy, this is just a very small drop in the bucket of your wealth.”

So again we look at what's there. So wow, Bill
Gates gave $5 million. Put it in
comparison with your income, it may be that it was the cost of a postage stamp to
him. I’m not like railing on him but let's say it’s some wealthy donor. I'm
using that because of the amount of the wealth there. When they give like that it
sounds like a big figure but in comparison to what they have, it isn’t. (BTW, this
is not a solicitation for donations tonight. I started reading two or three of
these articles in preparation for this and it finally went down to solicitation
of donation. And I go, “Wow, what a trick!”) (laughs…)

So but the idea is that we want to give freely. Some
of the churches have the right approach where they have a tithe where people
give 10% of their income. They figured 10% is not going to hurt them. Some
churches use that money in a very good way. Others, let’s say independent pastors
line their pockets with that money unfortunately and really do nothing but try
to get more and more donations.

This is not an indictment of all religions and
tithing because tithing does serve the purpose. The idea is we have to be
generous with what we do. Sometimes people will donate land, will donate money
to build the Chan Hall or a Temple
or bring in the statute or whatever. They have the money but they also have the
willingness that they want to help out. Nothing wrong with that; still not
quite a perfected practice but still not bad. Still developing merit; the more
merit that's there is the least that the people think of what they're doing. If
they just simply just do that, there’s more merit. The more they think they're
going to go to heaven because their name is put on a little plaque closer to
the altar or the pew has their name on it then, I don’t think so. I’m not really
sure what kind of a god will be impressed with all that. I don’t really know if
I want to worship him.

The idea is regardless of what religion it is, it
all comes from the heart. We have to see in this way that there is a giving. One
of the most important thing that we're talking about is the giving of time, the giving of help to
other people that really need it without thinking about “Am I going to get
something out of this? Or what can I get from this person if I can help him” or
to give to them because you've going to be hitting them up later on.

We continue on:

What is the right or wrong
motivation? The Agutaranikaya(?), a collection
of checks of the Vinayavitaka(?) section
of the Pali Canon, lists a number of
motivations for practicing charity. This includes being shamed or intimidated.

So you're out with your friends and a poor little flower
girl is there with a broken flower. You look at her and she goes, “Please
mister, can you buy this?” You really don’t want to buy it; you actually don’t
want to give her any money but your friends are there. So you're shamed into
doing it, “Give her something!” Besides it’ll make you look better for your
date or whatever it is.

Not the right motivation or you’re intimidated into
giving: the Policeman's Ball - “How do you know my name?” Giving to receive a
favor – I’m going to give you this you know. I think politicians have really
perfected that. Giving to feel good about your self; these are impure motivations.

The Buddha taught that when
we give to others, we give without expectation of reward. We give without
attaching to the gift or the recipient. We practice giving to release greed and
self-clinging. Some teachers propose that is good because it accrues merit and
creates Karma that will bring future happiness.

Others say that this is
self-clinging and an expectation of reward. In Mahayana Buddhism in particular (which is what we work with), any
merit that might come with giving is to be dedicated to the liberation of
others.

So as we practice, we begin to have this perfection.
In the Six Paramitas: giving,
morality, patience, exertion or effort, meditation and wisdom, this is the
starter because like when we say our Four Great Vows before the class, the very
first one is “I vow to deliver enumerable sentient beings.” That’s the start. That’s the compass heading of where we go. Why, because in that, embodies
the Four Noble Truths about suffering and how sentient beings suffer and how we
want to alleviate that suffering of all sentient beings. That all comes full
circle through to the sixth Paramita,
which is wisdom telling you the Right View to see things clearly and you wish
you could do it in this way.

There was one monk who was meditating by a lake on
a moonlit night; very clear night. And this thief came by and started to slip
away with his sandals and his cloak. And the monk said, “It is a pity I cannot give him this moon.”

The moon in Chinese culture stands for enlightenment
or the Pure Mind. What we strive for is to try to alleviate the suffering of
others in whichever way we do. Even if it’s the most minute thing that we could
do, we still try to alleviate that suffering. We try to take away the harm that
we give to others, the harm that we do to our self. Little by little, this is
the practice. This is one of the Paramitas as well; this effort.

So as we have this effort, we maintain our
morality. We work with the meditation,
and little by little we change. This part is very, very important. When you
begin to see giving in this way, it changes. Because if we don't do that, what
happens is that we get this pattern of just giving for the sake that we have to
give. How many of you have given to a pan handler when you’ve never really felt
good about it or walk by one? You’re honest about it but the whole thing is
that they’ve perfected the art of looking sad. Some of them are truly sad; some
of them have just perfected that look. So it makes you feel guilty and you want
to give. You didn’t really give from your heart but you gave because you felt
guilty or sometimes you feel you give to somebody because you don’t want to be
that person.

So it's interesting how we do it. But if we just
simply begin to master this art of being generous in our life, little by little
the self drops off. They can't really be sustained there when ones heart is in
the right place.

He continues on:

The last Paramita - wisdom, ties
back to the first. As long as we're sorting out ourselves into givers and
receivers, we’re still falling short of the Dana Paramita. Wisdom teaches us
that there is giving and receiving but there are no givers and receivers. At
the same time, there is no giving without receiving and in a sense giving and
receiving are one. If giving is good, then receiving is equally good. The idea
of giving and receiving are one, is this idea of Upekkha or equanimity.

Sometimes
they refer to them as the Ten Paramitas rather that the Six Paramitas and this
idea of equanimity is the tenth. This is the idea that there is no giver and there
is no receiver - one simply performs
this function in a perfect state; the perfect state of mind that we don't
think that we’re getting anything or that we need to get anything from it.

Of course you still have to get something for your Aunt
Rose or whatever you know, if you really do that and there is a pressure to get
a present for somebody. You know we do that but we also have to begin to
perfect this giving so that little by little we take out that stigma of the self
in the giving. It is because the self really creates a non-gift. It's not
really a gift; not a perfect gift anyway. The person receives it but it’s because
you're giving it out of some cultural tie to giving it or obligation or love of
a particular person. Of course you're going to give a good gift to your child
or to your husband if he’s been good, but it's not really a perfect gift.

Giving is much greater than what we think it is; these
kinds of gifts that we give to each other. I’m not telling you to go to your
family and when they say, “Why didn’t you give out any gifts?” And you go,
“Gilbert says I don’t have to give any gift out.” It’s selfish. Don't do that.
You’ll be thrown out of the family, especially if you’re Mexican.” (laughs…) So
the thing is that you understand this. And if you're going to give to somebody,
do give them the things. And don’t stop at the service station to get something
or you’ll be unpleasantly surprised or somebody might be. In any case there is that
difference.

We also get to something that's very interesting
which is we have the idea of these material gifts and these non-material gifts
of time. Then there’s a special category of gifts. Can anybody tell me what
sutra it came from?

Student: The Diamond Sutra.

Gilbert: The Diamond Sutra says that if anybody
recites four verses of the Diamond Sutra to another person then, the quality of
that gift is immeasurable. If one took the Ganges River from India and for
every grain of sand in the Ganges River there was a Ganges River, and for every
Ganges River, all the grains of sand in all the Ganges rivers was a treasure
chest and was given to the poor, the four lines of the Diamond Sutra would still
exceed those gifts. You’d think that's a pretty big gift. Everybody could be
happy. They would be sitting on treasure chests; everybody in the whole world.

But it is not as great as that. Now to give you an
idea of the Diamond Sutra which I
just probably paraphrased the verses of it, the last verse is: All that you should think of this fleeting
world is: a morning star, a drop of dew on a leaf, a bubble on a stream, an illusion,
a phantasm, a dream.

Hearing that and understanding that’s what this
fleeting world is, this bubble on a stream, what I’ve given you is immeasurable
in terms of wealth. Why, because one, it sets
things into motion karmically. The other is the type of gift that was
given. The gift itself is liberation.
No matter how much one gives of material wealth, one could not receive
liberation from that.

You don't believe me, ask Donald Trump. Is he
happy? Does he look happy? He looks miserable. You see all these rich guys and
they look like they are in pain all over - “They dare take my money? The Dow
Jones went down, I lost so much!”

But to really be
liberated of all of these selfish notions that arise in the mind, it's
fantastic; incredible; that’s giving you
the moon. That's generosity. You, each of you are capable of that
generosity. This is the Mahayana Buddhist approach to things. It's not about
your “self.” It’s not about you getting out of here. It's about how many can
you take out and go back in again and get more. This is the way we see things.

We saw today in the news that a Navy Seal is lost
saving a doctor in Afghanistan. (http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2012/12/10/166889271/navy-seal-killed-during-afghan-rescue-is-identified?ft=1&f=1001) Is his life less valuable than the doctor? But to
him he was thinking that “the doctor’s life is just as valuable as mine” so he
was willing to put himself in harm’s way to do that. Maybe a militaristic type of
an analogy isn’t that great but I think it does show this generosity beyond
what we’re normally willing to give. Just like the bailiff when I started studying
for the lecture today. It was incredulous for him that somebody that didn't
know another person would give up their kidney. They could not believe that.

Sometimes people ask me, “You go here, you go there,
you travel all over the country, where do you find the time to do that? I never
really asked myself that. I never really look at that and go, “Oh, really?”
It’s just like this movie Field of Dreams you know, “if you ask me I’ll go,” and
I go all over to teach. I try to do my best. I recognize that sometimes I have
my limits but I do my best to teach. Why, because it’s important. It matters to
each and every one of you and it matters to the ones that you're going to talk
about this to.

It matters to Lety. It matters to Lety’s mom who
teaches her friends Buddhism even though she doesn’t call it Buddhism. It
matters and that’s the thing - really work this holiday season to look into
what generosity really is. It will help you because the perfection of that
generosity will help you in your practice. Any question?

Student: (inaudible)

Gilbert: I figure that's probably the case because
it's not just exclusive to the Diamond Sutra. There is nothing mystical in the Diamond
Sutra that will do that. It’s in the nature
of the heart and in the nature of let's say resetting the compass of the mind of the individual being there but
it's no longer the individual being. It's the true compass that’s there. That’s
the part that's important - that whatever is taught in this way is that you’re
giving this gift of liberation.

It may not happen in this lifetime. People may go,
“Okay you taught me the four lines but I don’t feel anything.” It’s doesn’t
work this way like some kind of drug or something. “You” won’t know it when it hits you because “you” won't be there.
The mind is there, the body is there, your perfected actions will be there but
the self won’t.

So it’s anything that points toward liberation that
sets you towards that kind of a practice. I avoid the idea of talking about the
truths of things because lately I have been spending a lot of time studying the
Tien Tai theory. They talk about all
these different kinds of truths until finally yesterday I said, “There’s no
truth!” There can’t be truth because if it’s true, then there’s something
that's not true, but everything is true. If everything is true, there's no true
and everything is also no true.

But if you start to explain it, you go, “OMG, I’m
training as a Tien Tai philosopher” and you start changing it. But it's not in the words. It’s in the heart; it’s in the feeling of this
direct experience of mind. Even though I talk a lot about the Tien Tai School
and the Huiyin School, the Yogacharra School, all the different school of the
Dharma, the reason I bring all those back to Chan is because Chan is this direct
experience with all of this. All of these things are found in all these
different schools; the Six Paramitas, all the 37 Aids to Enlightenment, they’re
all there.

But when we apply it to our school, our school looks
at it and say, “I dare you to investigate
mind” to stop the thinking. How do we stop the thinking? Not by stopping
the thinking but by stopping the attaching to the thinking and seeing that all
that is perfectly mind. Bringing this
realization up via the Right View, then mind is settled.

The danger in the intellectual school such as the
Tien Tai or Huiyin School is one can get into debates about “how many angels
can balance on the point of a pin.” When it’s done properly, it’s an excellent practice
but it is not necessary to bring about a direct experience. Chan is a more
direct route to that but Chan nevertheless does require Right View.

Without the Right View, the meditation is worthless - the Right View of what
mind is so that we never lose track of what we’re looking
into – what is mind every single
moment.